…is not the sound you want to hear coming from your computer. Specifically the computer that you just replaced the power supply on because it was dying. I am really hoping nothing but the new power supply fried :/.

My Laptop is at the Apple Store now, being sent out to be fixed tomorrrow. It started throwing kernel errors every 10 to 15 minutes earlier this week, so it was impossible for me to use it in my programing class. Dan and I went to the Apple store today. Talked to the Genius bar guy, who wasn’t overly helpful, but did fill out everything so it could be sent in and fixed. Hopefully it will be a minor fix and I won’t lose everything on my harddrive (I backed up the important stuff I hope). So at the moment I am borrowing Dan’s laptop since it is useful to have one for class and while I’m at school waiting for class. Hopefully mine will be fixed for next semester.

Okay so basic history we have Speakeasy DSL. We love our Speakeasy DSL, but when you compare it to almost any other DSL package or Cable for that matter our DSL bill is large, huge, very high. Now note for our money we get a couple (10) static IPs, the ability to run as many servers as we want and 1.1/1.1 up and down SDSL. So it is a decent deal.

However, we are trying to cut costs a bit. So we decided to look into ways to save money on DSL and get faster service for downloads. Hey everyone else is on like 3/something we want it too. So today we took a look at our options. We know we can’t really run servers if we switch providers so we looked at both ISP and Colo/Hosting options. So we looked at Verizon and Comcast. Verison is definately the cheaper of the two. Since if we went Comcast we would most likely get cable as well. Either way we would save a bit. With Verison the cost for DSL would be around $40, with Comcast if we don’t have cable it would be around $60. If we do have cable it would be $60 for cable plus whatever their deal is to combine the two, so say about $100 total. Both choices would save money. Which is never a bad thing.

So then we look at Colo. There are not many places that offer Colo, which is different from hosting because with hosting they own the server and control the operating system and such. With Colo you own the box and can do what you wish with it. Prices for Colo were between $125 and $300. The $300 being more then we are currently spending.

So we check hosting. Most hosting places use Redhat, not really high on hubby’s choice of Linux but liveable. Except most of them use Fedore Core 2. Which isn’t suported anymore by Fedore… (spelling maybe off so bite me) Plus to get a server we like it is about $100 a month. Sigh. And Hubby would really want two servers anyways…

So apparently we are currently on the best plan possible for us. Too bad it isn’t as fast as it could be and it costs a bundle, sigh.

Note we were getting part of the cost covered because we run messageboards for our guild (this was very helpful), unfortunately the autosubscribing script does not work right, which screws things up and is a pain and means that it was removed. So we are no longer getting any compensation. Which isn’t a big deal, but it was nice while it did last.